ASIO

ASIO: Computers need to take audio in and send it out. On the audio card, ASIO is software that controls audio stream input/output. So ASIO is a computer driver for digital audio, originally developed by a German company, Steinberg. The ASIO protocol is usually associated with higher-end audio hardware. It enables software to directly communicate with the hardware, thus bypassing any audio system built in to the computers operating system, like Windows or Apples OSX. This is good because Native Microsoft Windows audio tends to have very high latency issues whereas Apples OSX does not have the same latency issues. Taking advantage of ASIO may require some work. Users will often have to install the ASIO drives while installing their new digital audio interface on the computer.  This is not necessary for transferring recordings from a field recorder to a computer, but may be necessary for the computer’s audio software to play back the recording utilizing specialized audio hardware interface. [ Audio Glossary ]